Difficult
by xraescully
Summary: Mulder and Scully discuss Scully's trip with Cancer Man.


TITLE: Difficult

AUTHOR: xraescully

EMAIL: Just let me know where!

Rating: K

Category: S

Keywords: MSR

Spoilers: En Ami and Season 7

Summary: Mulder and Scully discuss Scully's trip with the Cancer Man.

Disclaimer: The X-Files characters belong to 1013 and Fox Corporation.

Author's Notes: This is one of the first stories I wrote, so I hope it is okay. Let me know if you like it.

X X X X X X X

The whole discussion, the one that she had hoped they would never have, started with one statement from him. The Gunmen had left, and neither of them said a word to each other. Still standing in the doorway, staring out the window, he said, "You went without me." It wasn't filled with anger, though she knew he was angry with her, but it was filled with something else she couldn't place.

"How many times have you gone without me, Mulder? Just left me in a nameless motel, or at the office, or standing in the dust, wondering where you are going and why you don't want me with you. How many? I lost track a long time ago." She could feel the tears start to form, but she would not let them flow. She couldn't remember when it had all started to get harder and more emotional. She couldn't remember why she had let things go this far, and if she would have wanted it a different way if given the chance.

Things were defiantly more difficult now than ever before. She had almost lost Mulder due to some sort of psychosis, while she spent time in Africa looking for a cure, and then almost lost him to brain surgery. He kissed her on New Years, and his flirting had become more and more. She had actually started a little flirting of her own. It was getting harder and harder to ignore all the feelings. And it looked like tonight was the night that she let all those feelings be known.

"It's not the same." He waited for a response, but got nothing. "It's not the same because you went with him. Of all people him." He bent his head to look at the floor, trying to push the tears back. When had it all become so difficult? He loved her and trusted her and now this?

She realized the something behind his first statement. He wasn't just angry, he was upset and hurt. She had broken the trust that he had so willfully given her. The one thing that she held completely in her hands, and she broke his precious gift.

"Mul..."

"Don't. I don't want to hear you're sorry. I don't want to know why. I trusted that you wouldn't betray me." He sat down in the chair across from her.

'Oh God, please don't let him think I did this because I'm working for them,' was the thought that ran through her mind like a freight train. She wanted him to look at her so she could see his eyes, so she could show him that she loved him. She wanted him to say her name, but he didn't even do that.

"Mulder, he offered me a chance to have the cure for my cancer. A cure, Mulder." He looked up at her, a pained look from the memory formed on his face. He didn't want to remember, and neither did she, but there was no getting around it. "He told me something about myself that even I denied as being true. But he was right. He told me that I would die for you, but I won't let myself love you."

"That's it then? You went with him to get a cure from cancer and came back with nothing and the fact that you won't love me?" He asked. He knew he was being harsh, being unreasonable. But the person that he cared most about had just hurt him. How had it become so hard? How had it come to this; questioning each other's motives and feelings? How?

"I do, Mulder. I do love you. As my best friend, but I won't let myself love you as a lover. I want to, but I can't." She wiped a tear from her cheek. "I can't because of my cancer. I'm so afraid that we will be together and actually be happy and then my cancer will be back and I will eventually end up leaving you. I don't want to leave you like that. It would hurt you too much. I saw you the first time; I don't want to do it again. I can't, I just can't." She was crying now, and he had moved to sit next to her. It was time to comfort her, tell her it would all be all right. And he hoped that it would. Hoped that everything was all right, and that it wouldn't be so difficult.

"I thought that if he gave me what he said he was going to, that I would be okay. He offered me a way to be with you. But, I should have known that he wouldn't let it happen. I should have known we couldn't be together."

Mulder picked her hand up from her lap and kissed it. "Scully, I had no idea." They made eye contact and he pushed a stray strand of hair from her face. "I'm so scared of losing you, Scully. As much as I'm scared to lose you to the cancer, I'm scared of losing you and not knowing what it was like to really be with you."

"I'm just so scared of it, Mulder. I'm scared of us, of it all."

"I know, I know. So am I."

"I just wanted it so much that I was willing to betray your trust for it, for us." He placed both his hands on her cheeks, whipping the tears away with his thumbs. He slowly leaned in and whispered in her ear.

"I want to take the chance if you do." She turned her head toward his and their lips met. It was a soft kiss, it only lasted for moment, but it was the seal of promises to come.

"I want to," she said as he cradled her in his arms. How did things get so difficult?

X X X X X X

END


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